Archives For food

Should companies be allowed to patent living organisms like seeds and use those patents to monopolize food production globally?

A small farmer from Indiana named Vernon High Bowman is taking on the biotech giant Monsanto in a seed patent infringement case. Monsanto sells to farmers under a contract that requires the farmers to purchase new genetically engineered seeds each year. This means that they are prohibited from saving and replanting the next-generation seeds.

Great news! The FDA has started paying attention to the food labels and has warned 17 major companies to make the necessary changes within 16 days. Go to the link below for the full story and to see specific products that were mislabeled with claims that the product will treat disease, is healthy or free from unhealthy fats.

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Buying in bulk is a great way to consume in a more environmentally friendly manner while saving almost 90% of the cost of packaged foods and dramatically reducing waste sent to the landfill. It may be a bit intimidating at first if it is an unfamiliar process to you but it’s extremely similar to purchasing produce. In loading up on product you have the choice to bring your own container (just be sure to have it weighed prior to filling), bringing reusable cloth bags or using the container (or bag) provided by the vendor. The bulk aisle is priced by the pound but the consumer can purchase as much or as little as they choose so feel free to get recipe specific by only getting a couple tablespoons needed for your recipe. To avoid being overwhelmed when acclimating to bulk buying, begin by familiarizing yourself with one section then moving on to the next once you’re more comfortable. Happy shopping!

The Oxford study reinforces previous research that has concluded a healthy diet can reduce heart disease by lowering cholesterol, blood pressure and the risk of diabetes. This is fantastic encouragement to stay strong and stick to a prominently vegetarian diet!

Award winning science author and environmentalist, Mark Lynas, has publicly apologized for spearheading the anti-GMO movement stating that he “discovered science”. Do you find this to be a convincing argument?

We must figure out a way to un-invent this food system. It’s been a major contributor to climate change, spawned the obesity crisis, poisoned countless volumes of land and water, wasted energy, tortured billions of animals…

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“On the surface, the bill does include some discretionary funding for things like organic farming research and support for beginning farmers. But that’s just it. It’s discretionary, not mandatory (like the direct payments), making it highly likely that it will disappear in the annual appropriations process.”

Is something always better than nothing? In the case of the farm bill extension that was buried in Tuesday’s last minute fiscal cliff deal, maybe not.

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) calls the deal — which will provide $5 billion in subsidies to industrial-scale corn, soy, and wheat farmers while short-changing local food, organics, and beginning farmers, and decimating on-farm conservation efforts — “deeply flawed.” The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC), meanwhile, has referred to it as “blatantly anti-reform,” while the Union of Concerned Scientists calls it “a giant step backward” and “a blow to farmers who want to grow healthy foods and the consumers who want to buy them.” The National Young Farmers Coalition was also “incredibly disappointed with the results.”

Making food, this peanut butter for instance, from scratch has advantages that are numerous and varied compared with purchasing their commercially produced counterparts. Clearly, the advantage my blog is most keenly interested in is the fact that making one’s own food is cheaper 99 per cent of the time. However, there is one only slightly less obvious argument for doing so – it makes it far easier to control exactly what goes into your recipes and diet.

For instance, even the most expensive supermarket brands of peanut butter contain palm oil, an ingredient both unnecessary and environmentally immoral – it has caused the destruction of the natural habitat of thousands of species of animals worldwide. The less said about cheaper products the better, for their recipes also contain brown sugar and peanut oil, in addition to palm oil. All of this unnecessary, environmentally damaging and unhealthy produce in a spread…